To:THE EXECUTIVE OF THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF GERMANY

Published:First published in 1964 inCollected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 47.

      Printed from the original in A. Warski’s handwriting and signed by Lenin.

      Translated from the German.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1977],

      Moscow,Volume 43,

      pages253-254a.Translated:Martin Parker and Bernard IsaacsTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2005).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.

Copenhagen,
			      September[1]2,

1910

DearComrades,

TheAugust 28 issue ofVorwärtscarried an utterly
outrageous anonymous article about the state of affairs in the Russian
Party.[2]At the height of the work of the International Congress, when
everyone is moved by the desire to preserve socialist unity, to discuss
with the utmost caution the internal disputes in the parties of the
different countries, to avoid if possible interfering in these disputes, to
demonstrate the strength, the grandeur and moral prestige of
Social-Democracy in all countries—at this very time the Central Organ of
the German Party suddenly, without any reason, without the slightest
apparent need, prints an article containing incredible at tacks on Russian
Social-Democracy. The above-mentioned article shamelessly criticises the
entire Social-Democratic movement in Russia; it strives to represent
Russian Social-Democracy to the foreign public in the darkest colours, as
being in a state of decline, impotence and degeneration. Further, it
assails and slanders all the existing groups and trends in the Party
without exception, from top to bottom; and, finally, it contains crude
attacks on official central bodies of the Party—the Central Commit tee
and the Central Organ—accusing them of factional prejudice, etc,;
individual members of these central bodies too are slandered in the most
outrageous manner.

Suchan article in the Central Organ of the German Party, the anonymous
author of which was prompted solely by a desire for revenge for some petty
personal grievance, will damage the interests of the Social-Democratic
movement in Russia; it constitutes an unexampled violation of international
solidarity and brotherhood in relation to Russian Social-Democracy. And if
the Russian Party, which has many well-known writers, has for several yearsavoided parading its internal affairs on the pages of the German Party
press, that is only because it does not consider the foreign press to be a
suitable battlefield for settling its disputes. The building of the unity
of the Social-Democratic Party of Russia is and remains the paramount and
most difficult task for all the comrades in Russia, and primarily for the
central bodies of the Party. Clearly, it is essential, in the interests of
preserving unity, to avoid anything that is prejudicial to the resolving of
internal differences. No one of course should object to the problems of
Russian Party life being treated in a calm, objective manner. But we are
most emphatically opposed to malevolent, petty and treacherous attacks on
the movement, the Party and its central bodies, such as that contained in
the above-mentioned article, the more so since the anonymous author who
poses as an omniscient outsider is introduced as a correspondent of the
Central Organ, the newspaperVorwärts, which lends the article
an official editorial character.

Delegatesof the Central Organ of the RussianSocial-Democratic Labour PartySotsial-Demokrat.G. PlekhanovA. Warski

Delegateof the Central Committee, member ofthe International Socialist BureauN. Lenin(Vl. Ulyanov)

[1]Inthe original “August”.obviously a slip
of the pen.—Ed.

[2]Areference to the anonymous article “Die russische Sozialdemokratie
(Von unserem russischen Korrespondenten)” published inVorwärtsNo. 201 on the opening day of the Copenhagen Congress of the Second
International, August 28, 1910. The author was L. Trotsky. Lenin recalls it
in his article “The Anonymous Writer inVorwärtsand the State
of Affairs in the R.S.D.L.P.” written in 1912 (see present edition,
Vol. 17, p. 535).